Curriculum Planning
Extensive thought and planning goes into our curriculum planning process. We have established two forums to address curricular improvement and innovation: individual content departments led by a department chairperson and a districtwide, cross-curricular Curriculum and Assessment Council.
Each representative group of educators is charged with the examination and consideration of the overall strengths and challenges of our curriculum's effectiveness in meeting the dynamic needs of our students.
The Curriculum and Assessment Council is comprised of 25 educators representing all content areas and instructional levels. The mission of this council is to address collaboratively district curricular and assessment concerns including, but not limited to:
- Scheduling, implementation, purpose and usage of standardized assessments to improve instructional practices
- Development, recommendation and implementation of a multi-year curriculum cycle for all content areas
- Communication of progress on vertical articulation of curricula within each content area and across content areas
- Meeting the challenge of aligning instructional practice to curricula that is mapped to the Pennsylvania Standards.
MASD curriculum is reviewed for revision, renewal and adoption on a staggered five to seven-year cycle by content and based on need. The Social Studies department from Kindergarten through grade 12 revised and adopted a new curriculum in 2008-2009. The Language Arts and English departments will be reviewing research on best practices for a curriculum adoption and review to occur in 2010-2011.
